Authorship

Basic principles

When making a list of authors for a submitted manuscript, the following aspects should be considered:

• The authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the development of the concept, design, research, interpretation, and writing of the article.
• The author who is responsible for communicating with the journal (the corresponding author) confirms that all co-authors are included in the list of authors.
• Other persons who participated in some research stages should be mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.
• Invited or honorary authorship is not allowed. For example, inclusion of individuals who did not significantly contribute to the article, but were added for the prestige or other unscientific reasons.
• The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all co-authors read and approve the final version of the manuscript and agree with its publication.
• The corresponding author should also confirm that they will communicate properly and promptly with the journal's editorial team at the submission, review, and post-publication stages.
• AI and AI-assisted technologies cannot be listed as the authors of the manuscript. See the relevant section.

Authorship Changes

The editor responsible for the publication should be notified with a detailed explanation if any changes are made in the authorship list in the originally submitted manuscript (addition or removal of authors, change of the corresponding author, or reordering of authors). The corresponding author is obliged to notify the editor responsible for the publication of any changes in the authorship list of the manuscript before its final acceptance for publication. In addition, it is necessary to confirm that all authors (including those who are being added or removed) have been notified and have agreed to the changes. If significant changes in the authorship list are found in the original and accepted manuscript (for example, adding or removing authors without notifying the editor), the journal will conduct an investigation in accordance with COPE recommendations, which may lead to certain consequences, including possible withdrawal of the article.

It is highly undesirable to change authorship after publication, but can be considered in exceptional cases (for example, if errors are found or for ethical reasons) as part of a published correction related to the original article.

Specific cases

Authors should indicate all persons who have contributed to the work but do not meet the criteria for authorship, such as technical staff or data processing specialists, indicating their contributions. Please use the Acknowledgments section for this.

Deceased authors who meet the criteria of authorship should be listed as co-authors with a note "Deceased". Authors should obtain the appropriate consent from the institution or the heirs of the deceased author, if possible.

If two authors have contributed equally to the article, they may indicate the dual authorship by putting an asterisk on the manuscript's title page and making a short note: "X and XX contributed equally to this article."

Project participation

We follow the widely accepted CRediT taxonomy to highlight the unique contribution of each co-author: conceptualisation, data curation, formal analysis, funding acquisition, investigation, methodology, project administration, resources, software, supervision, validation, visualisation, writing — original draft, writing — review and editing. There is a field in the template file to represent this information.

Authors who do not meet the CRediT authorship criteria (for example, providing minor technical assistance or administrative support) should be listed in the Acknowledgements section with their specific contributions. By following these guidelines and clearly documenting individual contributions using the CRediT taxonomy, authors may ensure transparent and complete attribution of author roles in their manuscripts.